Back Away From the Keyboard, Ma'am

I don't often get outraged. It's just not something I do. It takes a lot of energy for one thing, and I like to save mine for fun stuff, and I have a bizarre sense of humor, so you're more likely to amuse me than outrage me. So, maybe I just don't understand this post because I have an abnormally low sense of outrage. (Like a low WBC count or something.) Or, maybe some people need to back away from the keyboard and take a few Xanax before their heads explode.

The backstory to this is, and honestly I don't even know if this is true, because I don't really care, is that on passports, parents will be listed as "Parent 1" and "Parent 2"* rather than "mother" and "father". Now see if you can reconcile this minor wording change with the vitriole it engenders:

I'm outraged by this. I am not either "parent one" or "parent two" to my beautiful daughters. I AM THEIR MOTHER. And I have the legal right to be recognized as such by every national, state, and local agency that ever has the authority to collect any such information from me.

I'm actually not sure you have a defined legal right to have agencies refer to you as "mother". I actually asked my boss. He laughed, shook his head and walked away. I did a quick check in the Constitution. Nothing there.

Anyway, wtf do you care? Does this person think that, due to a wording change on an official document, our entire society is going to stop using the word "mother"? Does she think motherhood itself will disappear and possibly also her children?

Look, here's reality. We're living in it, whether you like it or not. (Frequently, I do not.) There are people raising children who do not fall into the role of mother and father. Hey, I was one of them for years. My husband and I raised my niece for a number of years**. We were not "mother" and "father". We were parental figures, to be sure, just not mother and father. But that's not what our friend is so outraged about. Can you guess what it is she so outraged by?

If two gay men are raising one or the other's biological child or a child they've adopted, or a child they paid a reproductive prostitute to manufacture for them, they can call themselves the child's "fathers," plural, until the cows come home. The child still has one father. And if two lesbians are raising a child as stated above, they can also insist on being "Mommy One" and "Mommy Two" to the poor child they are raising. The child has one mother--either one of them, or a woman who gave the baby up for adoption, or a reproductive prostitute who was paid to manufacture a child for them. No human being on the planet has more than one actual father and one actual mother; no human being has ever been born as the result of the genetic combination of two sperm cells or two egg cells.

Ah, Teh Gai. Feel the Christian love, so indistinguishable from hate. Watch as it drips down your screen like maggots from a bloated corpse. Luffly, isn't it? Here's the thing: I could buy her argument that adoptive gay parents are not mothers and/or fathers, except that I guarantee you she would say no such things about heterosexual adoptive parents, who are also, technically, not mothers and/or fathers to their children. Adoptive heterosexuals are mothers and/or fathers, adoptive homosexuals are not.

And god(s) forbid anyone mistake her for a gay person, which, in her bizarre world, could possibly happen with the new Parent 1 and Parent 2 designations. I have a suggestion, oh hateful one: carry around pictures of your children emerging from your vagina, as well as a picture of you and your husband having sex. Show them to everyone who sees these passports so they do not mistake your for a homosexual person. Have "I am not a faggot" tattooed on your forehead so the rest of us, who have no reason to see your childrens' passports, will know as well. Quite frankly, I would appreciate knowing exactly who to stay the hell away from.

*Who did not immediately think of Thing 1 and Thing 2? I want to be Parent 1 or Parent 2 and I want my passport photo to clearly show the special sweater I will buy for just that occasion. See, I'm amused, not outraged.

**Proudest Parent 2 moment: my niece texted me during the Eagles game yesterday (yes, I am still weeping bitterly) to beg me to update her on the game because her mother had changed the channel. I love that kid.